Just because another national Sunshine Week’s come and gone doesn’t mean we have to stay in the dark.

We just wrapped a week of highlighting the ways in which ordinary citizens — you, me, and anyone with time and patience — can use the law to keep tabs on their government.

But the Freedom of Information Act, the California Public Records Act, the Ralph M. Brown Open Meeting Law and the Bagley-Keene Act are ultimately only words on a page. Without good faith efforts from government officials to live up to both the spirit and letter of these laws, good luck to anyone who can’t afford an attorney.

We shared a depressing Associated Press report during Sunshine Week that last year alone, the feds have redacted, sat on or said they couldn’t find public records sought out by the public more often than at any time in the previous 10 years.

As the AP reported: “People who asked for records under the Freedom of Information Act received censored files or nothing in 78 percent of 823,222 requests, a record over the past decade. When it provided no records, the government said it could find no information related to the request in a little over half those cases.”

Whatever your politics are, administrations come and go, and each helps set the tone for how just how seriously America’s states and municipalities take open government laws. When government unreasonably digs its heels in, it costs us all more than just access to public information. According to the AP, the feds spent $40.6 million in legal fees dragging their feet on records requests last year alone. Closer to home, the city of Eureka and Humboldt County have in recent years found themselves shelling out taxpayer dollars in five- and six-digit sums, battling transparency requests.

Open government laws at every level of government each have a host of perfectly valid exemptions, but this is ridiculous. As long as we all allow it to go on, it’s going to cost us still more of our own money — and make an even greater mockery of the public’s right to know.

Marc Valles resides in Eureka and is managing editor of the Times-Standard. He can be reached at 707-441-0507.